Author: lbegg

With the community engagement project in mind, I set out to the Moss Free Clinic in Fredericksburg to find out how this non-profit benefits the Fredericksburg community. What I found was a series of power distributions that has left a community, specifically the uninsured, disempowered. This community within Fredericksburg has exclusive disadvantages in terms of access to health care for the greater Fredericksburg community. Dissimilarly to my first research project, which examined broad gentrification for the city of Cork, Ireland, I intend with this project to examine a clinic program that targets a direct community, and how it works to empower them.

Resulting from oppressing grievances and trigger events, riots have occurred throughout the United States in various forms. Integral to the study of riots in various cities is the study of a riot’s aftermath. How elites and politicians respond to riots defines not only personal values, but also demonstrates the values, morality, and perceptions prevalent locally and nationally. Here, I examine the responses of three mayors after three separate riots in Chicago and New York City and what resulted from these responses.

Breakdown theorists and Resource mobilization theorists seek to reveal the societal causes and individual decisions that erupt into non-routine collective action, but their explanations differ drastically. In order to distinguish the differences in these theories, I have chosen to examine the Baltimore riots of 2014 from both a breakdown theorist’s perspective and a resource mobilization theorist’s perspective. According the Useem, the Baltimore riots would be seen as indistinguishably “non-routine.” However, it is to the reader’s discretion to decide what exactly caused the riot’s to erupt, let it be the #Blacklivesmatter movement’s sentiment spread through social media in terms of resource mobilization, or was is the built up anger from repression in terms of a social breakdown theory?

As my first research project, I have chosen to delve into the processes of gentrification around the world, with a case study I photographically examined in Cork, Ireland in parallel to my research of a case study in New York City’s Harlem. As I have worked in Harlem for three summers and have lived in Cork for five months just this year, the idea of ongoing gentrification of both areas both fascinate and worry me. Gentrification is characterized by the coerced or forced removal of one neighborhood to be replaced by another set of residents, often more affluent than those they are replacing. Gentrification thrives by diminishing affordable housing in order to displace the existing population, with hopes that more affluent residents could bring economic growth to the area. What contrasts these two case studies is that Cork desperately seeks to gentrify it’s dilapidated city and expand it’s population, whereas Harlem is vigorously fighting against the continual gentrification of their historically black neighborhoods and fight for their right to remain in their city.

In shaping the political urban environment, few political bosses have made as lasting of an impact as James Curley did in early twentieth century Boston. As the instigator and organizer of a political machine, Curley’s dominating career “included four terms as mayor, two terms in Congress, one term as governor, and two terms in prison” (Connolly 134). His tactics for mobilizing voter support ranged from patronage to bribery, but his power rested most heavily on his charismatic social influence over the people of Boston.